AlterNet.org: Claire Glasshttp://www.alternet.org/authors/claire-glass
en14-Year Old Girl Faces Life In Prison for Killing Her Baby: Is She a Victim Of Florida's Insane Abstinence Education?http://www.alternet.org/14-year-old-girl-faces-life-prison-killing-her-baby-she-victim-floridas-insane-abstinence-education
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<div class="field field-name-field-teaser field-type-text-long field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">For killing her newborn baby, 14-year-old Cassidy Goodson will face trial as an adult for first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse.</div></div></div><!-- All divs have been put onto one line because of whitespace issues when rendered inline in browsers -->
<div class="field field-name-field-story-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://www.alternet.org/sites/default/files/styles/story_image/public/story_images/screen_shot_2012-10-18_at_3.33.09_pm.png?itok=UyEsZS4g" /></div></div></div><!-- BODY -->
<!--smart_paging_autop_filter--><p><em>This article originally appeard on <a href="http://www.xojane.com/issues/73-year-old-woman-raped-and-beaten-for-daring-to-photograph-public-masturbator">xoJane.com</a>.</em></p><p>14-year-old <a href="http://www.theledger.com/article/20121003/NEWS/121009773" target="_blank">Cassidy Goodson</a> was indicted by a grand jury on October 4 for the murder of her newborn baby. She’ll face trial as an adult for charges of first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse and may serve a life sentence if convicted. </p><p>Cassidy <a href="http://www.theledger.com/article/20120928/NEWS/120929363" target="_blank">went into labor</a> in her Lakeland, Florida mobile home, and gave birth to a 9-and-a-half-pound baby boy on September 19. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=153SQXxYbWw&amp;feature=related" target="_blank">According to authorities</a>, she bit down on a towel and ran the shower to muffle noise from the bathroom for fear that her mother, also in the mobile home, might hear her. </p><p>Upon discovering the bathroom mess, Cassidy’s mother took her to the emergency room, where she said she’d miscarried. Several days later, however, her mother discovered the body in a shoebox in her bedroom. </p><p>Once arrested, Cassidy told police that she strangled the baby because she did not know what else to do with it, and further, that she did not want her relationship with her mother to change. </p><p>In all likelihood, what Cassidy said is accurate; she simply did not know what else to do about her pregnancy and didn’t have the adult support she needed, from either family or school, to weigh her options.</p><p>This incident should be a wake-up call to proponents of abstinence-only-until-marriage curriculum, and to educators who stand to effect change in the lives of students concerning healthy sex. Instead, both the media and the criminal justice system is operating fully within an anti-choice narrative that values fetal rights over those of the mother and ignores the physical and psychological health of pregnant women and girls in need to systemic support. </p><p>Florida, where Cassidy lives, has historically been resistant to any kind of sex-education reform that promotes or mandates comprehensive education over abstinence-only-until-marriage curricula. In fact, the state returned $4.5 million in federal funds as of 2010, awarded under the Obama Administration’s Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP). Instead, the state accepted <a href="http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/gpr/13/3/gpr130324.pdf" target="_blank">Title V funding</a>, originally established in 1996, which allocates $50 million annually for grants to promote sexual abstinence until marriage as the primary means of preventing pregnancy and STDs. </p><p>On its face, PREP is a sign of progress, allocating a minimum of $250,000 per state to provide comprehensive sex-ed in schools. However, states that didn’t apply to receive funding under this stream between 2010 and 2011 became ineligible to reapply for the next three years.</p><p>What’s more, the Secretary of the U.S. Department Health and Human Services <a href="http://www.siecus.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Page.ViewPage&amp;PageID=1191" target="_blank">can provide three-year grants</a> to community-based and faith-based organizations and local entities in states that refused PREP funding using the allocated funds for Fiscal Years 2012 through 2014. That said, states like Florida that refused or returned funds don’t suffer for it, and actually enjoy similar benefits with less regulation. </p><p>Title V enforces an 8-point definition of abstinence, including that “a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in the context of marriage is the expected standard of human sexual activity” and that “sexual activity outside of the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects.” </p><p>As of October 1, 2012, the only requirements for sex-education in Florida were age-appropriateness and freedom for parents to opt out of enrolling their kids in “prevention” courses altogether. That classes should be culturally appropriate, unbiased or provide medically accurate information were not required according to a Guttmacher Institute <a href="http://www.guttmacher.org/statecenter/spibs/spib_SE.pdf" target="_blank">State by State report</a>. </p><p>RH Reality Check, a non-profit online community and publication that works to advance sexual and reproductive health and rights, published a comprehensive study on sex education in the state of Florida overall and by district in 2008 entitled, <a href="http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/files/Florida-Report-Sex-Education-Sunshine-State.pdf" target="_blank">Sex Education in the Sunshine State: How Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Programs are Keeping Florida’s Youth in the Dark</a>. The report, conducted by the <a href="http://www.siecus.org/" target="_blank">Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States</a> (SIECUS) targeted Florida specifically for its historic support and use of abstinence-only-until-marriage curriculum in public schools. </p><p>According to SIECUS, the report was compiled “in an effort to inform all of Florida’s citizens about the colossal failure of these programs and the ongoing waste of their money.”</p><p>According to this study, approximately half of the States in the country opted out of Title V funding from the federal government. An overwhelming majority, 80% of those states, cites research that belies the success of such curricula in favor of comprehensive sex-ed. Indeed, “a congressionally mandated study conducted over nine years at a cost of almost $8 million concluded that these programs are not effective in stopping or even delaying teen sex and have no beneficial impact on young people’s sexual behavior,” according to the Guttmacher Institute. </p><p>Polk County, where Cassidy attended high school, teaches community-based abstinence-only-until-marriage curricula in its schools. Nurse Jamie Kress facilitates Polk County’s Prevention Program that brings registered nurses to schools to cover a <a href="http://www.lcmaknightsonline.com/pdf/misc/Prevention%20Education%202012_2013.pdf" target="_blank">variety of subjects</a> that might fall under the category of sex-ed.</p><p>According to Kress, contraception is only addressed within the context of marriage, and instead, the program promotes abstinence from all sexual contact as STD and teen pregnancy prevention. A student thinking about having sex, or who is already sexually active, would not be advised to use condoms or other forms of birth control. </p><p>If a student were already under the impression that she has committed the one act that runs contrary to the basis of everything she’s been taught in school, I would argue that she would be less willing to approach adults at school with concerns that she is pregnant. Although little has been said about Cassidy’s character, or her home life, the facts of the case demonstrate that she was in dire need of support outside of her family regarding her pregnancy. </p><p>According to Sheriff Grady Judd, Cassidy’s mother was “in denial,” ignoring family members who said that Cassidy might be pregnant and the bulge likely visible on Cassidy’s 100 pound, 5’3” frame. This is all the more reason that Cassidy needed an external support system, the very type of structure that sex-education programs ideally provide.</p><p>Families are imperfect and often adults are ill equipped to disseminate crucial information regarding reproductive and sex-based choices to children; that’s why public school sex-education exists. </p><p>At 14, Cassidy is not old enough under the eyes of the law to drive a car, or to have sex at all according to Florida’s <a href="http://www.vahealth.org/Injury/sexualviolence/varapelaws/documents/pdf/statutory-ra" target="_blank">age of consent</a>; why in this case, do authorities expect her to know the proper course of action for dealing with an unwanted pregnancy without guidance? Perhaps it is more frightening to face the failure of an entire infrastructure than it is to punish one child, and label her a kink in an otherwise functional system. </p><p>Reports say that Cassidy’s mother gave her pregnancy tests in order to dispel rumors that she was pregnant, rather than telling her daughter that if she was pregnant everything would be okay. This sends the message that public perception is more important than her health and might have encouraged her to take measures to erase the pregnancy into her own hands.</p><p>Cassidy used a pair of scissors to pry the baby out of her body, risking her own safety in the process of trying to cover up the pregnancy. This speaks not just to her desperation, but also to the fact that the education she received indicated that her well being mattered less than avoiding a public confrontation about the pregnancy. The safety of two children was threatened; one albeit more catastrophically, but the charges Cassidy faces excuse the system that failed her entirely. </p><p>Florida received $13,101,054 in federal abstinence-only-until-marriage funding in 2008 alone, second only to Texas in the entire country. In fact, since 2002, Florida received over $64 million in sex-ed funding from the federal government. This money goes towards spending on class materials like videos and books, guest speakers, and curricula that SEICUS states, “not only fail to provide youth with the information they need in order to protect themselves from the negative health outcomes that are clearly a problem in Florida, they also rely on fear and shame and present stereotypes, biases, and blatantly inaccurate information as truth.” </p><p>This particular SEICUS report studied Florida prior to the implementation of PREP, however, because Florida opted out of money from this funding stream in favor of community based programming with Title V funding, it is likely that practices are largely unchanged. According to the SIECUS, the curriculum material reviewed was found to employ shame and fear based tactics, and further it contained outdated information.</p><p>In Polk County, federal abstinence-only-until-marriage funding went to the Plant City Pregnancy Center, which provides abstinence education. Plant City features <a href="http://plantcitypregnancycenter.org/abortion-education.html" target="_blank">sensationalized descriptions of abortion</a> on its website while purporting to be a resource for teens. </p><p>It’s impossible to know whether Cassidy considered either having an abortion or putting her baby up for adoption, although the latter seems especially unlikely based on the measures she took. If she had been interested in an abortion, she might have contacted the nearest pregnancy crisis centers of the three centers closest to her high school: Your Choice Lakeland, Options for Women, and Catholic Charities of Central Florida. This is all assuming she had the resources and the sense of agency to contact these facilities in the first place. What’s more, the State of Florida requires that a minor obtain parental consent for an abortion, something Cassidy clearly hoped to avoid. </p><p>According to the <a href="http://www.prochoice.org/policy/policyreports/cpc.html" target="_blank">National Abortion Federation</a>, such centers exist all over the country, presenting themselves as medical clinics when in fact they exist to discourage women from having abortions. If she did contact a crisis center, like for instance, Options for Women, she might have been confronted with the anti-choice rhetoric evident in the section of the clinic’s website that describes Post Abortion Syndrome. </p><p>This fact sheet cites these statistics for women who have undergone an abortion: 61% report feeling guilty, 28% attempt suicide, 53% experience depression, and 45% feel anger and remorse. There’s also a quiz on the same page with a series of 14 questions, followed by the statement, “If you answered ‘Yes’ to two or more of the above questions you are at HIGH RISK for experiencing Post-Abortion Syndrome. (Their caps) “Are you 18 or younger?” and “Is having an abortion a difficult decision for you?” are among those 14. Given the reaction Cassidy had to the birth of her baby, she was likely under extreme duress, and is, of course, younger than 18. If those aren’t scare tactics what are? </p><p>We have no way of knowing the intimate circumstances of Cassidy’s home life, or any intimate knowledge of her internal struggle. However, it is the responsibility of sex-educators and law enforcement to acknowledge and explore the possibility that this manner of “prevention” is not effective and may have contributed to Cassidy’s case. To blame a 14-year-old entirely for her reaction to a sense of helplessness exempts the system that was meant to prepare her. </p> Thu, 18 Oct 2012 08:34:00 -0700Claire Glass, xoJane729318 at http://www.alternet.orgLGBTQPersonal Healthcassidy goodsonmurderbabychildfloridasex educationtrialadultchild abuseabstinence-onlystudentsschoolTwo Books Check in on Feminist Revolution in Wake of Shulamith Firestone's Deathhttp://www.alternet.org/gender/two-books-check-feminist-revolution-wake-shulamith-firestones-death
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<div class="field field-name-field-teaser field-type-text-long field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Two new books suggest we might achieve some level of equality if only we could embrace Firestone&#039;s radicalism.</div></div></div><!-- All divs have been put onto one line because of whitespace issues when rendered inline in browsers -->
<div class="field field-name-field-story-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://www.alternet.org/sites/default/files/styles/story_image/public/story_images/screen_shot_2012-10-03_at_3.11.15_pm.png?itok=oGPlAa6f" /></div></div></div><!-- BODY -->
<!--smart_paging_autop_filter--><p>The death of radical feminist writer <a href="http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/13783/in_praise_of_being_daring_and_wrong">Shulamith</a><a href="http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/13783/in_praise_of_being_daring_and_wrong"></a> <a href="http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/13783/in_praise_of_being_daring_and_wrong">Firestone</a> on August 28 brought her controversial stand on reproduction back into public consciousness. At around the same time, British journalist Caitlin Moran’s <a href="http://www.theatlanticwire.com/entertainment/2012/07/caitlin-moran-how-be-woman-how-be-feminist/54619/"><em>How</em></a><a href="http://www.theatlanticwire.com/entertainment/2012/07/caitlin-moran-how-be-woman-how-be-feminist/54619/"><em></em></a><a href="http://www.theatlanticwire.com/entertainment/2012/07/caitlin-moran-how-be-woman-how-be-feminist/54619/"><em>to</em></a><a href="http://www.theatlanticwire.com/entertainment/2012/07/caitlin-moran-how-be-woman-how-be-feminist/54619/"><em></em></a><a href="http://www.theatlanticwire.com/entertainment/2012/07/caitlin-moran-how-be-woman-how-be-feminist/54619/"><em>Be</em></a><a href="http://www.theatlanticwire.com/entertainment/2012/07/caitlin-moran-how-be-woman-how-be-feminist/54619/"><em></em></a><a href="http://www.theatlanticwire.com/entertainment/2012/07/caitlin-moran-how-be-woman-how-be-feminist/54619/"><em>A</em></a><a href="http://www.theatlanticwire.com/entertainment/2012/07/caitlin-moran-how-be-woman-how-be-feminist/54619/"><em></em></a> <a href="http://www.theatlanticwire.com/entertainment/2012/07/caitlin-moran-how-be-woman-how-be-feminist/54619/"><em>Woman</em></a> was released in the United States, while <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Queer-20/130156/"><em>Gaga</em></a><a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Queer-20/130156/"><em></em></a><a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Queer-20/130156/"><em>Feminism</em></a><a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Queer-20/130156/"><em>:</em></a><a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Queer-20/130156/"><em>Sex</em></a><a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Queer-20/130156/"><em>,</em></a><a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Queer-20/130156/"><em>Gender</em></a><a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Queer-20/130156/"><em>,</em></a><a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Queer-20/130156/"><em>and</em></a><a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Queer-20/130156/"><em></em></a><a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Queer-20/130156/"><em>the</em></a><a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Queer-20/130156/"><em></em></a><a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Queer-20/130156/"><em>End</em></a><a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Queer-20/130156/"><em></em></a><a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Queer-20/130156/"><em>of</em></a> <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Queer-20/130156/"><em></em></a><a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Queer-20/130156/"><em>Normal</em></a> by J. Jack Halberstam joined the extensive catalogue of writing on the state of womanhood today. With varying levels of success, both books evoke Firestone and suggest, in vastly different ways, that we might achieve some level of equality if only we could embrace her radicalism today.</p><p>Published in 1970 when she was 25, Firestone’s <a href="http://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/firestone-shulamith/dialectic-sex.htm"><em>The</em></a><a href="http://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/firestone-shulamith/dialectic-sex.htm"><em></em></a><a href="http://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/firestone-shulamith/dialectic-sex.htm"><em>Dialectic</em></a><a href="http://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/firestone-shulamith/dialectic-sex.htm"><em></em></a><a href="http://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/firestone-shulamith/dialectic-sex.htm"><em>of</em></a><a href="http://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/firestone-shulamith/dialectic-sex.htm"><em></em></a><a href="http://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/firestone-shulamith/dialectic-sex.htm"><em>Sex</em></a><a href="http://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/firestone-shulamith/dialectic-sex.htm"><em>:</em></a><a href="http://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/firestone-shulamith/dialectic-sex.htm"><em>The</em></a><a href="http://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/firestone-shulamith/dialectic-sex.htm"><em></em></a><a href="http://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/firestone-shulamith/dialectic-sex.htm"><em>Case</em></a><a href="http://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/firestone-shulamith/dialectic-sex.htm"><em></em></a><a href="http://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/firestone-shulamith/dialectic-sex.htm"><em>for</em></a><a href="http://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/firestone-shulamith/dialectic-sex.htm"><em></em></a><a href="http://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/firestone-shulamith/dialectic-sex.htm"><em>Feminist</em></a><a href="http://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/firestone-shulamith/dialectic-sex.htm"><em></em></a> <a href="http://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/firestone-shulamith/dialectic-sex.htm"><em>Revolution</em></a> identifies female biological function, namely child-bearing, as the root of gender discrimination, and calls for its end in favor of laboratory gestation and birth. She believed that with advances in medical technology, many women would opt out of pregnancy, ultimately eliminating gender and parental distinction. She encouraged women to abstain from sex indefinitely, as she had, until such practices became standard, and took inspiration from Marxist ideology to examine women’s rights.</p><p>While Firestone’s theories were widely criticized and ultimately dismissed, they have gained a particular pertinence given the political threat to dismantle hard-won reproductive rights in the U.S.</p><p>Firestone said of her <em>Dialectic</em>: “That so profound a change cannot be easily fitted into traditional categories of thought, e.g., 'political', is not because these categories do not apply but because they are not big enough: radical feminism bursts through them. If there were another word more all-embracing than <em>revolution</em>–we would use it.” She admits that the change will require a ripple effect of reshaping, across political and social fronts, and that, Firestone asserts, is the point.</p><p>The media coverage of Caitlin Moran’s <em>How to Be a Woman</em>, which was published in Great Britain and 17 other countries before reaching the United States on July 17, has been overwhelmingly positive. Emma Brockes wrote for the <em>New York Times</em>, “‘How to Be a Woman’ is a glorious, timely stand against sexism so ingrained we barely even notice it. It is, in the dour language she militates so brilliantly against, a book that needed to be written.” Jezebel’s Katie J.M. Baker, called the book a “modern feminist manifesto.”</p><p>It’s impossible to know what mark Moran will make in the long term, but whatever the life span of its popularity, the book doesn’t fulfill the needs of modern feminists, particularly right now when rights are under attack. With as much focus on beauty and fashion as childbirth and reproductive rights, <em>How To Be a Woman</em> skews the focus from more important issues.</p><p>I would argue that we’re ready to acknowledge Firestone’s foresight and question the way we raise our kids and rely on the nuclear family ideal <strong></strong>as J. Jack Halberstam has done in, <em>Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender, and the End of Normal.</em></p><p>Halberstam, an English professor and director of the Center for Feminist Research at the University of Southern California, takes an entirely different approach to examine forms of feminism. Going beyond Moran’s reclamation, Halberstam introduces a new term—gaga feminism—that asks us to reconsider supposedly fixed principles like gender distinction, children’s sexuality, and the importance of the nuclear family, and suggests that those definitions of normal are no longer parameters.</p><p>It would be unfair to suggest that a book should speak for the masses, especially one like Moran’s that does not claim to be academic (“Feminism is too important to be discussed only by academics”) and owns its categorization as memoir. But in response to the immense amount of attention the book has been paid, I would argue that we are wise to focus on something that challenges normal rather than a book that operates fully within it.</p><p>Where Moran focuses on women’s wedding obsession—“Weddings are our fault, ladies. And you know what? Not only have we let humanity down, but we’ve let <em>ourselves</em> down”—and tendency to spend massive sums of cash on the big day, Halberstam says that heterosexual marriage as we know it is on the decline, citing rising divorce rates and an increase of non-hetero and single headed households.</p><p>Like Moran, Halberstam does draw from her own experience as a trans person who embodies what she terms “female masculinity.” Mostly regarding her interactions with her partner’s two young children, and impressions of heterosexual relationships at Parent Teacher Association meetings, her theories do build from her life.</p><p>For instance, Halberstam says that kids view gender as unfixed, if given the freedom to do so. When one of her partner’s children asked, “Are you a boy or a girl?” Halberstam explains, “When I did not give a definitive answer, they came up with a category that worked for them—boy/girl.” The point being, rigid gender rules are prescribed, not natural, and kids growing up now will likely have an entirely new perspective than even young adults today.</p><p>On the other hand, <em>How To Be a Woman</em> skims the surface. As a memoir, the book is hilarious and vivid. I found myself rapt by her childhood experiences, often laughing aloud, waiting for adulthood chapters to bring on something new and more developed that never arrived.</p><p>Moran writes that everyone with a vagina is automatically a feminist: “Do you have a vagina?” she asks. “Do you want to be in charge of it?” If you said yes to both, “Congratulations! You’re a feminist.”</p><p>Here, it is clear that Moran is speaking to white, western cis women. Although a crucial population of women in a discussion of reclaiming feminism, it leaves out most of the world’s women. Moran tackles workplace sexism with a similarly simple rule of thumb.</p><p>In her chapter, “I Encounter Some Sexism!” Moran discusses sexism at work saying, “Don’t call it sexism. Call it ‘manners’ instead. When a woman blinks, shakes her head like Columbo, and says, ‘I’m sorry, but that sounded a little…uncivil,’ a man is apt to apologize.”</p><p>It is not helpful to rename the offense as something un-gendered. Moran agrees that sexist attitudes are commonplace in office settings, which is all the more reason to promote a direct response. Indeed, her suggestions are often inactive.</p><p>“We don’t need to riot or go on hunger strikes,” Moran says of women at large. “There’s no need to throw ourselves under a horse, or even a donkey. We just need to look [sexism] in the eye, squarely, for a minute, and then start laughing at it.”</p><p>Certainly, feminism need not outlaw humor to be effective, but laughing at such issues as work place sexism is not a solution. Further, it ignores the fact that we are in a time that demands changes be made; in 97 percent of congressional districts women earn <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/09/24/902181/women-earn-less-than-men-in-97-percent-of-congressional-districts/?mobile=nc">77</a><a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/09/24/902181/women-earn-less-than-men-in-97-percent-of-congressional-districts/?mobile=nc">cents</a><a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/09/24/902181/women-earn-less-than-men-in-97-percent-of-congressional-districts/?mobile=nc"></a><a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/09/24/902181/women-earn-less-than-men-in-97-percent-of-congressional-districts/?mobile=nc">to</a><a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/09/24/902181/women-earn-less-than-men-in-97-percent-of-congressional-districts/?mobile=nc"></a><a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/09/24/902181/women-earn-less-than-men-in-97-percent-of-congressional-districts/?mobile=nc">a</a><a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/09/24/902181/women-earn-less-than-men-in-97-percent-of-congressional-districts/?mobile=nc"></a><a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/09/24/902181/women-earn-less-than-men-in-97-percent-of-congressional-districts/?mobile=nc">man</a><a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/09/24/902181/women-earn-less-than-men-in-97-percent-of-congressional-districts/?mobile=nc">’</a><a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/09/24/902181/women-earn-less-than-men-in-97-percent-of-congressional-districts/?mobile=nc">s</a> dollar on average, but in some parts of the country and among some racial groups, the number is much lower. Instead, it suggests that attitudinal shifts are all we need.</p><p>Moran’s conclusion is this: “To just...not really give a shit about all that stuff. To not care about all those supposed ‘problems’ of being a woman. To refuse to see them as problems at all. Yes—when I had my massive feminist awakening, the action it provoked in me was a…big shrug.”</p><p>The pages shortly before this statement focus on the expense of laser hair removal, and the waste of time that is feeling fat, hairy, and unfashionable. This statement tells us that all it takes for equality between men and women is the right attitude. That said, her own attitudes toward certain women are less than accepting.</p><p><strong>“</strong> Women who’ve had the needle, or the knife, look like they’re saying: ‘My friends are not my friends, my men are unreliable and fainthearted, my lifetime’s work counts for nothing, I am 59 and empty-handed. I’m still as defenseless as the day I was born. PLUS, now I’ve spunked all my yacht money on my arse. By any sane index I have failed at my life.”</p><p>This homogenizes women, as if all women experience the same challenges, without beginning to attend to specificity. Moran describes her opinion of strip clubs in a similarly reductive way.</p><p>Of women who claim to be paying their way through school by working as strippers she says: “One doesn’t want to be as blunt as to say, ‘Girls, get the fuck off the podium—you’re letting us all down,’ but: Girls, get the fuck off the podium—you’re letting us all down.”</p><p>In numerous prescriptive critiques of Brazilian bikini waxing, high heels and stripping we are presented with superficial shoulds. That these women should simply get off the podium oversimplifies the issue for the 60 to 80 percent, mentioned on the following page of the book, who have experienced sexual violence, and those who have no financial alternatives. Further, it overlooks the fact that some women choose to work as strippers over other options, and implies that all sex workers are suffering victims whether they know it or not.</p><p>Conversely, Moran tells the story of her own abortion explicitly and eloquently; this is where the book shines. She opted for abortion shorty after the birth of her second daughter, and does not feel traumatized by it in retrospect.</p><p>The chapter works because it suggests an alternative discourse to the one that insists a woman must reel from and reflect on her abortion for the rest her life. Here, she acknowledges that enormous power relations need to change, not just the way a woman presents herself publically.</p><p>The time spent discussing beauty and fashion elsewhere skews the focus away from much larger issues at hand. That said, Halberstam’s more radical approach is anchored in the idea that big change is already underway.</p><p>Halberstam invokes Firestone’s theories to suggest that we are already moving beyond the power relations laid out in the nuclear family despite pop culture and political discourse’s refusal to stop returning to it.</p><p>“We are living in an age of artificial reproduction,” Halberstam writes. “This is a great moment to revisit the propositions laid out by Firestone, the ideas she advanced about the dependence of gender roles upon an ossified but wrongheaded set of connections between reproduction and nature.”</p><p>Halberstam states that Gaga Feminism isn’t just about Lady Gaga; this new form uses the term gaga, or going gaga, to describe people or movements that disrupt the class and race based definitions of “normal.”</p><p>Lady Gaga plays a role in both Halberstam’s and Moran’s writing, although far more prominently in the former. Moran says that we’re still recovering from years of “sexist bullshit” and therefore have achieved less than men historically. She sees female pop stars as contributing to the relatively slim cannon of female-made art as indicators that “action is getting underway.”</p><p>Halberstam would have us believe that we are in a state of action, and that Lady Gaga’s rise to fame is just one of many indicators. She says that kids who’ve grown up seeing alternatives to the nuclear family are demanding different definitions of male and female and the roles attached to those terms.</p><p>“These feminists are not ‘becoming women’ in the sense of coming to consciousness, they are unbecoming women in every sense—they undo the category rather than rounding it out…[they] also [look] carefully at the new forms of intimacy, sociality, and politics that surround us…”</p><p>Firestone’s predictions are visible today all over the place. They stood the test of time to some extent because they were striving for something outrageous and new. <em>How to Be a Woman</em>is one woman’s well drawn immensely entertaining story, but it asks very little of us and does not fall in amongst the ranks of the radical.</p><p>“If we are now living in the age that Firestone predicted,” Halberstam writes, “could it be that we have in fact begun the arduous process of changing our understanding of sex roles and bringing them more in line with lived reality?”</p> <!-- iCopyright Interactive Copyright Notice -->
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Wed, 03 Oct 2012 12:03:00 -0700Claire Glass, AlterNet721073 at http://www.alternet.orgLGBTQActivismBooksLGBTQcaitlin moraShulamith FirestoneJ. Jack HalberstamHow to Be A Womangaga feminismfeminismtrans wThe Dialectic of SexomenIt's a Screwed-Up World When Prostituted Women Are Arrested More Often Than the Johns Who Abuse and Kill Themhttp://www.alternet.org/gender/its-screwed-world-when-prostituted-women-are-arrested-more-often-johns-who-abuse-and-kill
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<div class="field field-name-field-teaser field-type-text-long field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">The system continues to treat women in prostitution as criminals rather than as women in need of special services. </div></div></div><!-- All divs have been put onto one line because of whitespace issues when rendered inline in browsers -->
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<!--smart_paging_autop_filter--><p>The Cook County Sheriff’s Office in Illinois spearheaded the third annual National Day of Johns Arrests, officially called <a href="http://www.cookcountysheriff.org/press_page/press_BuyerBeware_08_22_12.html">Operation</a><a href="http://www.cookcountysheriff.org/press_page/press_BuyerBeware_08_22_12.html"> </a><a href="http://www.cookcountysheriff.org/press_page/press_BuyerBeware_08_22_12.html">Buyer</a><a href="http://www.cookcountysheriff.org/press_page/press_BuyerBeware_08_22_12.html"></a><a href="http://www.cookcountysheriff.org/press_page/press_BuyerBeware_08_22_12.html">Beware</a><a href="http://www.cookcountysheriff.org/press_page/press_BuyerBeware_08_22_12.html">,</a> in August to address law enforcement’s historic focus on arresting prostituted women, as opposed to their customers, the johns. Twenty law enforcement agencies in 11 states participated in the 10-day sting, leading to the arrests of 268 johns, including 66 in Cook County. Though positive, the effort was largely symbolic, impacting just a small fraction of men paying for sex in Chicago and other parts of the country.</p><p>Chicago has been labeled a <a href="http://g.virbcdn.com/_f/files/8d/FileItem-149900-realitieshumantraffickingCook.pdf">hub</a><a href="http://g.virbcdn.com/_f/files/8d/FileItem-149900-realitieshumantraffickingCook.pdf"></a><a href="http://g.virbcdn.com/_f/files/8d/FileItem-149900-realitieshumantraffickingCook.pdf">for</a><a href="http://g.virbcdn.com/_f/files/8d/FileItem-149900-realitieshumantraffickingCook.pdf"></a><a href="http://g.virbcdn.com/_f/files/8d/FileItem-149900-realitieshumantraffickingCook.pdf">human</a><a href="http://g.virbcdn.com/_f/files/8d/FileItem-149900-realitieshumantraffickingCook.pdf"></a> <a href="http://g.virbcdn.com/_f/files/8d/FileItem-149900-realitieshumantraffickingCook.pdf">trafficking</a>; with its major airport, central location, and public transportation infrastructure, there are a minimum of 16,000 women and girls involved in prostitution on any given day, according to a 2001 <a href="http://www.enddemandillinois.org/sites/default/files/Prostitution_Prevalence.pdf">report</a> by the Center for Impact Research. The same report states that representatives from the Chicago Police Department Vice Squad said that women in prostitution “were getting younger and sicker.” That said, thousands of johns and pimps involved in those transactions go unpunished everyday.</p><p>The system continues to treat those in prostitution as criminals rather than as members of a demographic in need of special services. Felony incarceration for women in prostitution in Illinois has risen almost <a href="http://g.virbcdn.com/_f/files/2d/FileItem-242811-WritersToolkit.pdf">1,000%</a><a href="http://g.virbcdn.com/_f/files/2d/FileItem-242811-WritersToolkit.pdf">since</a><a href="http://g.virbcdn.com/_f/files/2d/FileItem-242811-WritersToolkit.pdf">1995</a>, and women make up two-thirds of the <a href="http://condor.depaul.edu/ssrc/documents/EndDemand_lLHB6462_Final.pdf">47,096</a> prostitution-related arrests in Illinois in the past 10 years.</p><p>“Johns have been able for many, many years to operate with complete impunity,” said Rachel Durchslag, executive director of the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation (CAASE). “It’s one of the reasons men continue to buy sex. One john said he’d been doing this for 20 years and this was the first time he had had any contact with law enforcement.”</p><p>In response to the imbalance CAASE launched <a href="http://www.enddemandillinois.org/">End</a><a href="http://www.enddemandillinois.org/"></a><a href="http://www.enddemandillinois.org/">Demand</a><a href="http://www.enddemandillinois.org/"></a> <a href="http://www.enddemandillinois.org/">Illinois</a>, a campaign to shift law enforcement’s focus from prostituted people to those paying for sex. End Demand has issued a <a href="http://www.enddemandillinois.org/newsitems/edi-releases-proposal-statewide-system">proposal</a> for special services for prostituted people who frequently face system-supported barriers—as simple as getting a job with an arrest record—that keep them engulfed in the sex trade.</p><p>According to the Crimes Against Children unit of the FBI, a child lives just <a href="http://g.virbcdn.com/_f/files/43/FileItem-150151-AM_Prostitution.pdf">7</a><a href="http://g.virbcdn.com/_f/files/43/FileItem-150151-AM_Prostitution.pdf">years</a><a href="http://g.virbcdn.com/_f/files/43/FileItem-150151-AM_Prostitution.pdf">,</a><a href="http://g.virbcdn.com/_f/files/43/FileItem-150151-AM_Prostitution.pdf">on</a><a href="http://g.virbcdn.com/_f/files/43/FileItem-150151-AM_Prostitution.pdf"></a><a href="http://g.virbcdn.com/_f/files/43/FileItem-150151-AM_Prostitution.pdf">average</a><a href="http://g.virbcdn.com/_f/files/43/FileItem-150151-AM_Prostitution.pdf">,</a><a href="http://g.virbcdn.com/_f/files/43/FileItem-150151-AM_Prostitution.pdf">after</a><a href="http://g.virbcdn.com/_f/files/43/FileItem-150151-AM_Prostitution.pdf"></a> <a href="http://g.virbcdn.com/_f/files/43/FileItem-150151-AM_Prostitution.pdf">entering</a> prostitution. What’s more, prostituted girls and women have a mortality rate that’s 40 times higher than the national average. Considering those findings, it’s no surprise that of 222 prostituted women interviewed in Chicago, <a href="http://g.virbcdn.com/_f/files/43/FileItem-150151-AM_Prostitution.pdf">44%</a><a href="http://g.virbcdn.com/_f/files/43/FileItem-150151-AM_Prostitution.pdf">to</a> <a href="http://g.virbcdn.com/_f/files/43/FileItem-150151-AM_Prostitution.pdf">50%</a> said they hand over the money they make to another party, and 79% said they feared that violent action would be taken if they stopped. But statistics and legislative efforts alone cannot change the prevailing attitudes that maintain that these are criminals who have chosen their fates.</p><p>On August 13, in the midst of the campaign to arrest johns, 22-year-old Brianna Gardner was found murdered in a hotel room in an upscale neighborhood in downtown Chicago. Her death was reported by local and major news networks, all of which omitted any and all information about Gardner as a person, in favor of discussing her involvement in prostitution and prior arrests.</p><p>Gardner’s death was not billed as tragic, but rather, as an unsurprising fact of life, noteworthy for having occurred in a supposedly safe neighborhood. News outlets exclusively used her mug shot, as well as a photo she posted on a jobs listing site for individuals looking for work in the sex trades, to accompany reports. This manner of coverage is standard; in fact, NBC has published a <a href="http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/police-bust-prostitution-ring-87592737.html">gallery</a><a href="http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/police-bust-prostitution-ring-87592737.html"></a><a href="http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/police-bust-prostitution-ring-87592737.html">of</a><a href="http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/police-bust-prostitution-ring-87592737.html"></a><a href="http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/police-bust-prostitution-ring-87592737.html">mug</a><a href="http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/police-bust-prostitution-ring-87592737.html"></a> <a href="http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/police-bust-prostitution-ring-87592737.html">shots</a> of women arrested for prostitution charges as a spectacle with little context.</p><p>“News coverage like this continually perpetuates victim blaming and fails to see this as a social injustice that needs addressing,” Durchslag said. “It’s appropriate to say, here is another example of how prostitution harms people who are in it. What’s not relevant is to say, this is a person in a high-risk lifestyle—it doesn’t address the system.”</p><p>ABC Chicago anchor Chuck Goudie opened <a href="http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local&amp;id=8772839">his</a><a href="http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local&amp;id=8772839"></a> <a href="http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local&amp;id=8772839">segment</a> on the murder by mentioning Gardner’s multiple arrests in her hometown of Dallas, Texas, and in Chicago. He does not stop there. He goes on to say, “Gardner was also looking for work on West Hubbard Street in River North, standing in the street and on the sidewalk, waving her arms, curbing cars, stopping pedestrians and soliciting single men for sex, according to police.”</p><p>By linking the notion that Gardner was inviting attention from potential johns with the story of her death, Goudie suggests that her behavior killed her. This narrative does not account for the behavior of the person who shot her in the head—likely a customer, according to authorities. Goudie goes on to cite Gardner’s appearance on the show “So You Think You Can Dance” when she was just 18, saying, “One of the judges said that she merely ‘squirmed around the floor’ and looked like ‘a very bored stripper,’ a prophecy that came true and may well have lead to her murder.”</p><p>The negative anecdote serves no purpose in the report other than to further disparage the character of the young victim. It is significant that the <em>Chicago Sun Times</em>acknowledged that Gardner’s murderer was likely a john because, according to Durchslag, the role of the buyer is seldom mentioned when crimes against people in prostitution are covered.</p><p>“The media can help reframe the issue that these are women in need of services, not criminal consequences,” Durchslag said. “If you know law enforcement has no respect for you, why would you come forward? I wouldn’t. We do a real disservice to women in the sex trade because they rarely feel comfortable reporting the crimes against them.”</p><p>It should also be noted that although most people who work in prostitution do experience violence, it is not always appropriate or accurate to describe someone who does this kind of work as a victim; some have alternative job options and continue to work in prostitution without being harmed.</p><p>Rachel Ramirez works with individuals who formerly worked in prostitution at the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless as a SAGE (Survivor Advocacy Group Empowered) organizer. She said that prostituted people often don’t report abuse for fear that they will be arrested. Given that <a href="http://condor.depaul.edu/ssrc/documents/EndDemand_lLHB6462_Final.pdf">97%</a><a href="http://condor.depaul.edu/ssrc/documents/EndDemand_lLHB6462_Final.pdf">of</a><a href="http://condor.depaul.edu/ssrc/documents/EndDemand_lLHB6462_Final.pdf"></a><a href="http://condor.depaul.edu/ssrc/documents/EndDemand_lLHB6462_Final.pdf">felony</a><a href="http://condor.depaul.edu/ssrc/documents/EndDemand_lLHB6462_Final.pdf"></a> <a href="http://condor.depaul.edu/ssrc/documents/EndDemand_lLHB6462_Final.pdf">arrests</a> for prostitution in Illinois between 2000 and 2009 targeted women, those fears are not unfounded.</p><p>A group of SAGE survivors organized a vigil on August 22, just a few days following Operation Buyer Beware. The evening, which honored survivors and those who have lost their lives while working as prostitutes, was planned long before Gardner’s tragic murder and coincidentally took place near the hotel where she was killed.</p><p>“There are always women and men getting killed in prostitution, so when we were planning it things like this would always come up,” Ramirez said.</p><p>Many of the survivors with whom Ramirez works were disturbed by the relative lack of coverage surrounding the death of <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gregory-trotter/transgender-killings-refl_b_1798880.html">Tiffany</a><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gregory-trotter/transgender-killings-refl_b_1798880.html"></a> <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gregory-trotter/transgender-killings-refl_b_1798880.html">Gooden</a>, a transgender woman who was killed one day after Gardner. Ramirez said they attributed this to the fact that Gooden was murdered on Chicago’s West Side, in a predominantly poor black neighborhood.</p><p>“The media reflects the realities of our attitudes, and it’s a really big deal for people who live in these communities when the woman killed in the Gold Coast got so much more press,” Ramirez said. “Prostituted people don’t matter to the media, or in the public consciousness. A poor black prostitute in a poor black area matters even less and the people I work with are so acutely aware of that fact.”</p><p>Rachael Morgan, a volunteer leader at the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless and a SAGE survivor, said coverage like that of Gardner’s case effects the way prostituted women see themselves.</p><p>“They treat you like you’re less than human,” Morgan said. “It’s unreal. [Gardner] endured a lot of pain when she was out there, and [this coverage] doesn’t symbolize any of that. Nothing positive the girl did in her life was mentioned. I wouldn’t have wanted to be remembered that way.”</p><p>Morgan’s story is not at all atypical. She started using heroin at 16, and her family cut her off financially several years later. In eight years on the Chicago streets, she was raped and brutalized numerous times. One of several pimps she paid over the years hunted her down and beat her when she fled. Although she was frequently victimized, Morgan said that virtually all of her interactions with police targeted her as the criminal.</p><p>“You get pulled over in a car with a john and you watch him drive away from the back of a cop car,” Morgan said. “It happens all the time. I was tortured in a garage for three hours. It was so sickening, and I couldn’t even think about going to the police because they’d pull up my record and arrest me. Every girl was the same way. You get raped, you go wash up, and go back out there.”</p><p>Morgan did approach police once, after she was hospitalized for having jumped from a moving car to avoid being shot by a john who had been holding a gun to her head. She identified the john by his nickname and watched as police retrieved his information, including his full name. Still, the police did nothing to punish this man—one of many who threatened her life over the years.</p><p>Morgan’s experience is more common than that of a prostituted 16-year-old girl in Chicago, whose 42-year-old assailant, Adekunkle Adefeyinti, was found guilty of two felony charges—aggravated battery and leaving the scene of an accident—on August 16.</p><p>Adefeyinti was convicted by a Cook County judge and stands to serve a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison for flinging the girl from his Hummer SUV to avoid paying her. Among her many injuries, part of her scalp was ripped off when her body collided with a parked car.</p><p>According to a press release from the State's Attorney’s Office, the conviction is considered a victory in the office’s fight against human trafficking and the sexual exploitation of children.</p><p>The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children states that one of every three teenage runaways is pulled into prostitution in the first 48 hours of life on the street, and according to the U.S. Department of Justice, most girls are first prostituted between the ages of 12 and 14.</p><p>CAASE spokesperson Kristin Claes, who was present at the trial, said the case is groundbreaking because it identifies the prostituted girl as a victim and specifically targets a john for violence against her. Considering that so many children are prostituted all over the country, such a precedent must be set. Claes added, however, that the judge expressed reservations about the victim’s integrity. “They’ve arrested johns before, but it’s groundbreaking to see a survivor of prostitution treated as a victim,” Claes said. Still, “the judge did say he did not find the victim credible because of what she was wearing in court.”</p><p>Adefeyinti’s sentencing hearing will take place on September 17, and will mark a success for the State’s Attorney in time for Operation Buyer Beware. It's a small step, however, toward reshaping social perception of women in prostitution.</p> <!-- iCopyright Interactive Copyright Notice -->
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Fri, 31 Aug 2012 08:46:00 -0700Claire Glass, AlterNet702748 at http://www.alternet.orgLGBTQActivismLGBTQLaborprostitutionjohnssex workersHow a Group of Women Sails Past Countries' Restrictions on Reproductive Rightshttp://www.alternet.org/world/how-group-women-sails-past-countries-restrictions-reproductive-rights
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There are five deaths from drug-related reactions for every 100,000 prescriptions written for Viagra, according to the <a href="http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=192352">Journal of American Medicine</a>. The drug has won near universal acceptance—social and medical—and 1 billion prescriptions have been written for it so far.</p><p>Conversely, just <a href="http://mediamatters.org/research/2004/11/17/pat-robertson-on-ru-486-lo-and-behold-people-ar/132311">one out of every 100,000</a> medical abortions results in death. This means that inducing one’s own abortion with the use of drugs such as Misoprostol and Mifepristone is actually safer than inducing an erection with Viagra. And yet, women in the United States and around the world are not afforded this autonomy, and instead must combat global politics to gain some modicum of control over their bodies.</p><p>Try to imagine doctors standing over the shoulders of Viagra users. Such a scenario is unfathomable because it would mean a medical professional interfering with one of life’s most private activities, and a reasonably safe one at that. So why aren’t women spared this indignity?</p><p>Dutch doctor Rebecca Gomperts began <a href="http://www.womenonwaves.org/">Women on Waves</a> (WoW), an Amsterdam-based non-profit, in 1999. The group travels by boat to countries where abortion is restricted or illegal and offers medical abortions to women on board the vessel. International law dictates that territorial waters only extend for 12 miles. Beyond that, a boat and everyone on it can operate under the laws of the vessel’s country of origin—in this case the Netherlands.</p><p>In the Netherlands, medical abortions using the drug Misoprostol, alongside the “abortion pill” Mifepristone, are legal. The combination is safe and 99% effective in inducing a reaction that is very similar to a naturally occurring miscarriage. In fact, Gomperts said, natural and chemically induced miscarriages are indistinguishable by medical examination. According to Dutch law, however, a doctor must obtain a special license to perform abortions past six and a half weeks, which means many physically eligible women cannot receive abortions on board.</p><p>Medical abortions are recommended for the first trimester of pregnancy, and can be safely administered by a woman nine weeks pregnant or less without the help of a doctor. Misoprostol is 90% effective when used alone to induce abortion and can be purchased over the counter in many countries besides the U.S. as a treatment for gastric ulcers. Given that 90% of abortions occur during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, according to the <a href="http://apps.who.int/rhl/fertility/abortion/CD006714_chengl_com/en/">World Health Organization</a>, at-home medical abortions are viable as a primary method for terminating pregnancy. This is especially the case for women living in countries where abortion is illegal, unsafe, or otherwise inaccessible.</p><p>“A woman does not need a doctor to put a pill under her tongue, or to put four pills under her tongue,” Gomperts said. “Women have miscarriages by themselves in rural areas without a doctor all the time. People have no agency in any way when it concerns health issues, and it makes [doing your own abortion] sound like a fairy tale in the U.S.”</p><p>WoW cannot operate in the U.S. due to strict FDA regulations, but it’s no surprise that the U.S. WoW helpdesk consistently receives calls from desperate women. According to the Guttmacher Institute, in the first half of 2011, <a href="http://www.guttmacher.org/media/inthenews/2011/07/13/index.html">162 new provisions</a> were set in motion regarding reproductive rights in the U.S. Nearly half aim to limit abortion access. As it stands, American women can get medical abortions with Mifepristone and Misoprostol through Planned Parenthood. But legality does not equal accessibility.</p><p>For women living outside the 15 states where Medicaid covers abortion services, a medical abortion costs about $500, varying slightly state to state. A surgical abortion costs around $460 with general anesthesia and slightly less with a local anesthetic. Because Medicaid does not transfer from state to state this fee would apply to the majority of American women on Medicaid.</p><p>According to the Guttmacher Institute about <a href="http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/gpr/10/1/gpr100112.html">40 percent</a> of poor women capable of bearing children receive Medicaid coverage. The majority of these women already have children or are pregnant, as most adults without children are not eligible for coverage. Given that the average monthly income for a family of three with Medicaid is $930, paying out of pocket for an abortion could mean spending nearly half of that monthly check. The drugs for abortion can also be purchased illegally on Internet pharmacies. Outside the U.S., access involves little more than a trip to the drugstore.</p><p>In many countries where abortion is illegal, women can still purchase Misoprostol from a pharmacy for as little as $1 in Pakistan, for instance, and $12 in Morocco. Gomperts said it might ultimately be easier for women in Africa to terminate their pregnancies than women in Missouri where abortion is technically legal. This is not to say that the struggle for reproductive rights is easier for women outside the U.S., but rather, that in countries with less regulation, side-stepping the law is simpler and safer in this case.</p><p>Julia Ellis-Kahana, a rising senior at Brown University, has been working as Gomperts’ assistant since October. Ellis-Kahana considers Gomperts her mentor and said working for her is like “working for superwoman.” As an American, Ellis-Kahana said she was deeply affected by the ease with which she was able to purchase Misoprostol in Morocco, where abortion is illegal.</p><p>“I was totally shocked by how easy it was to the extent that the next day I went to a different pharmacy and did it again,” Ellis-Kahana said. “After I got back to Amsterdam I saw an article that the last abortion clinic in Mississippi might close, and that made it more real for me. I had this realization that women in the state of Mississippi would have no access, while a week earlier I was able to walk into pharmacy and buy a medication that could be used to induce a safe abortion.”</p><p>With its ship campaigns to Ireland, Portugal, Poland, and, most recently, Spain in 2008, WoW intends to show women that they too can access Misoprostol as Ellis-Kahaha did, and use the drug at home. Announcing the ship’s approach must be done carefully and quietly; a phone number printed on the side of the vessel serves to announce its arrival and the group lets the press do the rest. The physical space of the yacht, Gomperts said, can only help so many women. Its purpose is as much to spread the word about medical abortions, as to be a site for abortion services.</p><p>“The ship has become a symbolic gesture because it’s visible and so unapologetic,” Gomperts said. “Offering abortion services without shame, where nothing is hidden, is powerful. People are always apologetic. They don’t talk about it. There’s a lot of self censorship even in countries where abortion is legal, and in some cases, abortions don’t happen because doctors don’t want to talk about them and are so afraid to be prosecuted.”</p><p>When Gomperts founded WoW in 1999 medical abortion had not yet been approved in the Netherlands, and she planned to provide surgical abortions on board. Before the group first set sail in 2001, however, medical abortion was approved, reshaping WoW’s procedure and, in some ways, its mission. Not only would WoW aim to provide medical abortions to women living in countries where it is illegal; it would also disseminate information to teach women how to perform at-home medical abortions themselves.</p><p>“The revolution of medical abortion and the empowerment it has given is huge, but when we first published information on how to do an abortion yourself in 2004 we were so scared,” Gomperts said. “There was a legal investigation, but we didn’t break any laws. The investigation concluded that if we used generic names we were free to give information.”</p><p>With a new focus on education, Gomperts founded <a href="http://www.womenonweb.org/">Women on Web International</a>, WoW’s sister organization, in 2006. The foundation is a referral service to put women without access to abortion in touch with doctors who can supply the necessary drugs. As political obstacles mount, circumventing the law is the only option for many women.</p><p>Just this past May, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan of the Justice and Development Party <a href="http://iwpr.net/report-news/azeri-abortion-ban-proposal-meets-angry-reaction">denounced abortion as murder</a>. In July, Turkey <a href="http://www.theglobetimes.com/2012/07/16/devil-in-detail-abortion-drugs-banned-in-turkey/">banned Misoprostol</a>, formerly quite accessible in pharmacies, and has moved to ban abortions past four weeks of pregnancy—a point at which most women may not even know they’re pregnant.</p><p>“You have this drug that really liberates, but the government response is to restrict access as they’ve done in Turkey,” Gomperts said. “In Nicaragua, where Misoprostol used to be very available, they banned it, and the same in Honduras, Brazil—that’s the backlash.”</p><p>Despite these setbacks, which effect massive populations of women, Gomperts sees strides being made elsewhere and said she measures success based on availability and education, rather than legality.</p><p>Just a few weeks ago, activists in Kenya set up a hotline (the eighth of its kind around the world) in Nairobi called <a href="http://www.womenonwaves.org/en/page/2583/in-collection/2604/safe-abortion-hotlines">"Aunty Jane</a>," with the help of Women on Waves. Using a software service called Freedom Fone, a Zimbawean open-source initiative, the hotline describes how to have an abortion using Misoprostol, how to prevent postpartum hemorrhaging, and provides birth control and reproductive health information. Unsafe abortion rates in Kenya, among the world's highest, caused 35% of maternal deaths, according to WoW’s Web site. In its first two weeks the hotline received over 50 calls. </p><p>“It’s one of the best-kept secrets, so we have been training women’s organizations about how they can spread information and train other women on how to use misoprostol for safe abortions and births,” Gomperts said.</p><p>Misoprostal also treats and prevents postpartum hemorrhaging, which, according to WoW’s Web site one in 10 women will experience after giving birth, and one in 100 will die. For this reason the drug has been placed on the World Health Organization’s List of Essential Medicines. According to the Guttmacher Institute, abortions in Sub-Saharan Africa results in <a href="http://www.guttmacher.org/media/presskits/abortion-WW/statsandfacts.htm">460 deaths</a> per 100,000 procedures. Now, thanks to WoW, a woman in Kenya in need of an abortion can simply dial a number to learn how to <a href="http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/87/9/08-055715/en/index.html">protect herself</a>.</p><p>Gomperts believes it is only a matter of time before at-home medical abortion is recognized as a viable option. “It will be totally accepted, within a very short period that women can do abortion themselves, but the problem will be to make sure that the medicines continue to be available,” Gomperts said, perhaps hinting at the next great struggle to come.</p><p><em>Instructions for how to do a medical abortion or get a referral are available on Women on Waves’ <a href="http://www.womenonwaves.org/">Web site</a>, in both regular and low-literacy versions. The instructions are also printed below.</em></p><p><strong>Medical Abortion Procedure</strong></p><p>1. The woman swallows one 200 milligram (mg) tablet of Mifepristone.</p><p>2.Twenty-four hours later, the woman lets 4 tablets of Misoprostol dissolve under her tongue. Each tablet contains 200 micrograms (mcg) of Misoprostol. The tablets are kept in place for 30 minutes until they are completely dissolved.</p><p>3. Four hours later, the woman puts 2 more 200-mcg Misoprostol tablets under her tongue and lets them dissolve as before.</p><p>All the doses must be taken as directed, even if bleeding has already started. Following this process for how to do an abortion with pills ensures that the abortion will complete correctly.</p> <!-- iCopyright Interactive Copyright Notice -->
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Mon, 06 Aug 2012 10:34:00 -0700Claire Glass, AlterNet688037 at http://www.alternet.orgWorldLGBTQWorldwomen on wavesabortionhealthmisoprostolrebecca gompertsamsterdamEating Disorders Aren't Just for the Young: Anorexia Killed My Grandmotherhttp://www.alternet.org/story/156383/eating_disorders_aren%27t_just_for_the_young%3A_anorexia_killed_my_grandmother
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<div class="field field-name-field-teaser field-type-text-long field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">My grandma&#039;s entire lifelong battle with anorexia upends the stereotype that eating disorders affect only the very young and impressionable.</div></div></div><!-- All divs have been put onto one line because of whitespace issues when rendered inline in browsers -->
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My grandmother, Flossie, died from anorexia in her 70s, but it wasn’t until I got to college that I realized how many little things are ingrained in me from this experience of loving someone so much who did not love herself. I’ve never actually had an eating disorder, but I operate in one of two extremes, either always eating healthily -- all. the. time. -- or eating whatever I want under the guise of not wanting to be like the suffering women in my family, all the while hating myself for it. </p>
<p>
Flossie decided she would quit eating altogether early in the summer before my junior year of college. What followed was a violent process for something that occurred almost entirely in her bed and at a snail’s pace. She starved to death a few days before my 21st birthday at the end of September.</p>
<p>
My grandpa, Hesh, was a wreck and worked furiously to undo what had been a lifetime in the making. Her sister once told my mom, Ellie, on one of their epic phone conversations that Flossie was anorexic since age 13. I highly doubt Janet used the word anorexic, as it wasn’t plainly stated, even in my house with my psychiatrist father, until long after I’d figured it out. By then it was an irreversible fact of all of our lives.</p>
<p>
This is not to say that no one had acknowledged Flossie’s slow death; my dad reminded her in moments of crisis in his frank way that this would kill her and that she needed help. This would result in silent periods between the two of them and not much else. Doctors over the years insisted she drink Ensure and Gatorade but those things never stuck because she knew the consequences. Flossie had been fixing to starve herself for many, many years, like an athlete in training, and the time had come. </p>
<p>
I suppose the ending was fitting, but that doesn’t mean I understand it, or that I can stop thinking about it, and writing about it. It defines me and contributes to the way I see myself more than any other part of my history. I am a woman from Philadelphia; I am Jewish but do not believe in God; I have a great deal of experience with other people’s eating disorders.</p>
<p>
Flossie and Hesh helped raise me from their house two doors down. There were portion controlled snacks and Flossie as fridge keeper. Also poker nights and mock trials, and Melba toasts, and a general celebration of most everything about me. It wasn’t all about the food and neither was Flossie. </p>
<p>
Her entire life should dispel the notion that eating disorders only befall the very young and impressionable. She didn’t care what anybody thought of her, but eating and any scenario that glorified doing so was totally repulsive to her. I have never met someone more openly disgusted by the very fact of other people’s eating, nor have I encountered a person willing to express her disdain for fat and overweight people without abandon like Flossie did.</p>
<p>
And despite all that, a good deal of my weekends as a kid took place in the food court at the Cherry Hill Mall watching her dissect mall sushi with a knife and fork. It would take this woman 45 minutes to eat the contents of a sushi roll and the seaweed, meticulously avoiding the rice, all the while keeping watch on how much I was eating of that Cinnabon, or Chik-Fil-A chicken salad on saltines (mmmmm). </p>
<p>
My grandmother was not a happy person. I think it is safe to say, though, that individual moments conjured in her something akin to happiness, short lived as they were. I think she felt happy being my play partner when I was little—my dolls are still eerily displayed on glass shelves in my room there—or when she watched me speak at my high school graduation. She did smile then. But jovial and lighthearted do not describe my grandmother. Flossie usually wore all black, often referred to herself as a fat pig, frequently discussed doomsday, and actually choked on the few occasions I ever saw her laugh. Her laughter became a phlegmy cough, her body rejecting it. She was atypical and I really wouldn’t have preferred it any other way. Her life made her tough. </p>
<p>
She grew up poor with a father who had affairs frequently and squandered what little money they earned on other women. Her mother was paranoid and severely depressed and tried to kill herself by walking in front of a bus. She succeeded finally by ingesting a bottle of heart medication later in her life. That was Pauline. But like Flossie, she wasn’t simply the sum total of her crippling disease. She divorced her husband at a time when doing so was more than frowned upon. She became a property owner and landlord, and supported her daughters by herself. They both went to college, too, although neither graduated. She was also appearance obsessed.</p>
<p>
I very clearly recall standing next to Flossie in Woolworth’s where she was helping me pick out a dress-up lipstick and listening to a story about strangers mistaking them for sisters. I could tell even then that it mattered, and that Pauline did not correct anyone. </p>
<p>
Flossie suffered for Pauline in other ways, too. She was married before Hesh, to a guy she’d fallen in love with during college. By the time they met, she’d taken diction lessons to lose her Philadelphia accent and learned to ride horseback. Their families met for the first time at the wedding, and shortly thereafter, his parents demanded he divorce her because her family was uncouth, white trash. Flossie paid the down payment on her first house with Hesh with the settlement from the divorce.</p>
<p>
My mom, Ellie, remembers that at meal times in that duplex Flossie often “drowned” her food in water. Anything she thought she’d be tempted to eat was subject to drowning to render it un-delicious. It’s amazing to imagine that Flossie would have been tempted by any food as by the time I came into the picture, it all seemed to sicken her. But that, I supposed, was a result of serious training.</p>
<p>
Ellie remembers Flossie peeling the tops off of sweet rolls at Stouffer’s—back when the company had a physical restaurant—only to drown the rest. </p>
<p>
As a little girl Ellie let me eat whatever the hell I wanted, without imparting any kind of food guilt onto me. On the way to elementary school we stopped in a bakery no more than four blocks from school and in the space of those blocks I’d manage to gut an entire challah bread, ball up the dough, pinching and squishing, and eat it like an apple. I generally left the crust carcass in the backseat and ate it on the way home.</p>
<p>
I remember once while on vacation with my parents that my dad suggested, innocently and accurately, that I might get sick if I was to finish the entire box of cookies I was already half way through. Ellie was displeased. I don’t think I got sick on that particular occasion, but do recall vomiting a number of times at a friend’s house after stuffing myself with enough birthday cake to kill a small horse. This wasn’t uncommon; my relationship to eating was a free-for-all. Despite her own memories of being banished from the kitchen, and watching her mother shove perfectly good food under running water, she protected me.</p>
<p>
It’s impossible, though, to hide one’s self from one’s kids. </p>
<p>
She has her own slew of food issues related not only to Flossie’s attitude about food, but also the various ways Flossie managed to pathologize Ellie’s appearance from a very young age. When she was 8, Flossie dragged her to the doctor to ascertain whether she was a little person, despite no doctor ever having mentioned such a possibility in the past. At around the same time she forced her to get some stray eyebrow hairs painfully removed by electrolysis.</p>
<p>
Ellie remembers herself as being fragile and strange. She can enjoy food, but in general it’s a source of sickness, and not to be trusted. She hardly eats when we’re at new restaurants or when she’s in unfamiliar settings because she is weary at all times that something might disagree with her. The collection of blacklisted items is always accruing. Attending meals with other people’s family I saw adult women bite head on into sandwiches, rejecting neither bread nor potato chips, without requesting that anything be omitted or brought on the side. I saw women eating lunches comparable to those eaten by their male counterparts and was, shocked. And shocked to be shocked because I had learned that at a certain point all mothers stop eating, and that they very seldom eat lunch. </p>
<p>
What I want from my life changes everyday, as I’m sure is true for most 23 year olds. I do know that I want to watch this legacy of food pain recede into my distant past. I want my daughters, should I have any, to eat when they’re hungry and for fun without allowing it to run their lives. Basically I think the women in my family are getting better and better by small increments in each generation. I eat well and healthily and have never had trouble maintaining a healthy weight—I have never tipped the scales toward being either over- or underweight—and yet I constantly think about food whether I am craving something particular and exciting, or recounting the things I ate that day and assessing my failure or my success.</p>
<p>
Ours is a life of all-consuming obsession and it’s my job, being the next in line to have babies and keep things going, to perpetuate a tradition of women who talk to one another on the phone on a daily basis and write letters, and become stronger for this community. I can’t really imagine myself without it, without having had the opportunity to know Flossie and ultimately see what self-destruction is in the most very basic of senses. To refuse your body’s call for food, to refuse even when it is thrust before your immobile body day after day by the person who loves you most, and to say no every time. The slow deliberate nature was a kind of explosion by tiny increments everyday because it means she had no qualms at all about death, not even momentarily. Missing Flossie is as painful as I’m sure living was for her. </p> <!-- All divs have been put onto one line because of whitespace issues when rendered inline in browsers -->
<div class="field field-name-field-bio field-type-text-long field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"> <!--smart_paging_autop_filter-->Claire Glass is the literary editor at GapersBlock.com, works for Story Studio Chicago, and freelances around town. You can follow her on twitter @MsClerval. </div></div></div>Thu, 19 Jul 2012 14:00:01 -0700Claire Glass, xoJane671751 at http://www.alternet.orgFoodPersonal HealthLGBTQFoodeating disorderanorexia